More than 4 in 10 Americans Have Step Relatives

Below:

Next story in Science

More than 40 percent of American adults have at least one
step-relative, a new survey finds.

While these people are more likely than Americans without
step-relatives to say their family life has turned out
differently from what they expected, 70 percent say they're very
satisfied with their family life, according to the Pew Research
Center report.

Blood ties still bind, however: The survey found that people feel
a greater sense of obligation to their biological relatives than
to their step-relatives.

In parallel with these findings, marriage in general has
undergone many changes over the last 50 years. A
previous Pew study found that in 1960, 72 percent of American
adults were married. In 2008, that number was 52 percent.

Changing family structure

The Pew Research Center surveyed 2,691 American adults via phone
in October 2010. The data were then weighted to create a
representative sampled of all adults in the continental United
States.

Major demographic changes, including a rise in divorce and more
babies born to
single moms, have contributed to the rise of the stepfamily
over the past decades, the survey found. Overall, 42 percent of
American adults have a step-relative. Thirty percent of Americans
have a step or half-sibling, 18 percent have a living stepparent,
and 13 percent have a stepchild.

That's demographic information family psychologists are thrilled
to have. The U.S. Census doesn't ask enough questions to capture
family structure, so researchers often lack data, said
Marilyn Coleman, a professor of Human Development and Family
Studies at the University of Missouri.

"It gives us an update on demographic information that I've been
scratching around trying to find for years," Coleman, who was not
involved in the survey, told LiveScience. "There's just nothing
out there."

Demographically, young people, blacks and people without a
college degree are more likely to have step-relatives than other
Americans, the report found. Just over half of Americans under
age 30 had step-relatives, compared with 40 percent of Americans
over age 30.

The difference is due to the fact that younger Americans are more
likely to have
divorced parents than Americans over 30, the survey found.

Sixty percent of black adults had at least one step-relative,
compared with 46 percent of Hispanics and 39 percent of whites.
One-third of college graduates have a step-relative, compared
with 46 percent of those without a college degree.

A previous Pew report found that these demographics also
experienced the greatest falling-off in marriage rates in
American society.

Family obligation

The survey asked respondents how obligated they would feel to
offer help (financial or otherwise) to step-relatives and found
that people are more likely to offer help to step-relations than
to close friends. For example, of people with a parent and
stepparent, 85 percent said they would feel very obligated to
help out their biological parent, while 56 percent say they would
feel similarly obligated to help a stepparent. In comparison, 39
percent said they'd feel obligated to
help out a best friend.

The findings aren't a surprise, family psychologists say, given
that stepfamilies in the report may not have been together for
very long.

"This isn't a surprise really that some of them wouldn't be as
close, because they may just be a few years old or relatively new
compared to relationships with [biological] parents and kids,"
Larry Ganong, a University of Missouri professor who studies
stepfamilies and family obligation, told LiveScience.

"There's going to be a lot of variability," said University of
Missouri family studies professor David Schramm. The report may
not capture the difference between stepfamilies who got together
when children were young versus remarriages after children from
the first marriage are grown, he said.

"To grow up with a step sibling your whole life, you're more
likely to be close to them than if you're 30 years old and your
parent remarries," Schramm said.

Despite "wicked stepmother" myths, 70 percent of stepfamilies
were very satisfied with their family lives (as were 78 percent
of families without step relatives). In fact, remarried couples
were more likely than couples in their first marriage to say that
their relationship was stronger than their parents' marriages.
Some research suggests people on their second marriages have high
standards for the relationship, Ganong said. The responses may
reflect those standards.